Biography of Prime Minister Phan Van Khai

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai was born in the Tan Thong Hoi village in Cu Chi 
suburban district of HCM City on December 25, 1933.

He began his revolutionary career when he was admitted to the village's
chapter of Viet Nam's revolutionary children's movement at the age of 14.
The 21-year-old Khai was among resistance fighters and revolutionary
sympathisers from southern battlefields who regrouped in northern Viet Nam
under the Geneva Agreement on Viet Nam signed in July 1954.

He took part in a land reform drive launched in northern Viet Nam soon after
peace returned in October 1954 to reallocate land from landlords to landless
peasants.

Khai attended a special training school for workers and peasants and
obtained a secondary education degree before being admitted to the Foreign
Languages College in Ha Noi.

After that Khai was sent to the former Soviet Union and studied economics at
the Moscow National University of Economics for five years.

After returning home, Khai worked as a specialist and was later promoted to
the post of deputy chief and then chief of a section attached to the General
Department of the State Planning committee.

In 1972, seven years later, Khai became a researcher of southern Viet Nam's
economy.
One year later he travelled to the southern battlefields and worked for the
liberation administration.
In 1974 he returned to Ha nOi and was appointed deputy director of the aid
planning department of the Government's National Reunification Committee.
One year after the American War ended in April 1975, Khai became deputy
director of the planning department of the People's Committee of HCM City.
He was promoted to director of the same department and vice mayor of HCM
City over the next three years.

Then in 1981 he was appointed HCM City permanent deputy mayor.

Khai was elected to the post of HCM City Mayor in 1985 and remained in that
job for five years when he was appointed chairman of the State Planning
Committee in 1989.

HeÊ wasÊ appointed to the post of permanent deputy chairman of the Council
of Ministers in 1991 and to the post of permanet deputy prime minister the
following year.
He remained in the post until yesterday when he was elected the new prime
minister of Viet Nam.

KhaiÊ was admitted to the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) when he was 26
years old.

His first position in the Party organisation was established in 1979 when he
was elected as executive member to the HCM City Party Committee.

HeÊ was elected as alternate member to the CPV Central CommitteeÊ at the
fifth National Party Congress in March 1982Ê and became full member to theÊ
CPV Central Committee in July 1984.

He remained a full member of the Party Central Committee for eight years
until the Ê seventh National Party Congress was convened in June 1991 when
he was elected as member to theÊ PoliticalÊ Bureau of the CPV Central
Committee.

He was re-elected as member to the Political Bureau of the CPV Central
Committee at the eighth National Party Congress in June last year.

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